Quote:
Originally Posted by Handro
The World Cup reaches (conservatively) 10x the amount of people that Lolla, the Architectural Biennial, and people with the trivial knowledge that Boeing or McDonald's is HQed here combined.
The average tourist wants to visit cities they've seen on TV. What event reaches the most middle class TV sets around the world?
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But almost no city that has actually hosted the World Cup has ever seen a tourist bump afterward. In fact, there’s often been losses for when the regular tourists rescheduled. Especially when the competition is split between multiple cities, and you don’t get the opening or closing ceremony.
Basically, what probably happened is that FIFA made their demands. Rahm asked if Chicago would have the opening/closing ceremony, but was told that NY/LA would host them. Chicago could have the Group Stage games and maybe a semifinal.
Then everybody realized that Chicago’s most valuable Summer events would have to be paused for Croatia vs. Ghana, and most of the people attending would be Chicago residents who in general care for soccer less than baseball and football.
It’s such a bad financial deal to go along with FIFA that it only works out if your voters are soccer maniacs.